A Third Thing: WNBA All-Star Rant, Sudden Death Summer League, Prowlin' Lynx
With a fun but disappointing WNBA All-Star Game in the books, it's time to look closer at Cathy Engelbert's stewardship of the league.
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Also, the women’s basketball community is wounded right now. A driver drugged on hydrocodone ran over Iowa commit Ava Jones and her family last weekend. Ava’s father died and she is still in the hospital. It’s hard to even put words to this tragedy as an outsider, but we can send good vibes and money. So if you have ever wanted to pay me, please donate to the family’s GoFundMe and never drive under the influence.
I have a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Miami. I learned a great many things at the U. But the only lesson that I have definitely internalized is the Rule of Three. I write things in threes, I say things in threes, I edit things in threes. Thirds just make sense to me at this point. So here’s a new series or maybe just a one off.
A rant about WNBA All-Star Weekend and Cathy Englebert
The WNBA season took a brief respite this weekend for the All-Star Game in Chicago. Allie Quigley’s beautiful shooting during her 4th three-point contest victory, Sylvia Fowles’s dunk, and Kelsey Plum’s killer mentality highlighted the festivities for me. The players’ tribute to Brittney Griner, who remains a political hostage in Russia, of all wearing her jersey was poignant as we await her release.
However, the WNBA’s bungling of the weekend hovers over all of the good times. The Skills Competition and Three Point Contest took place behind closed doors at a place that looked like a warehouse where a select group of elite high school players were allowed to watch. WNBA fans were not even told that the event would behind closed doors until last week. The league also had a similarly poorly advertised WNBA Live event, a Chance the Rapper concert that was not open to the public, and jerseys that were essentially the same as last year’s event.
It just kind of felt that the WNBA did this weekend on the cheap and haphazardly, which is a common refrain from the WNBA community. As a fan of this league, you’re constantly sticking up for it and defending its very existence to people. It sucks and it shouldn’t be that way. But the WNBA is still fighting for respect and fans/media all have to fight against (at least some of) the sexism that follows women’s sports.
However, you don’t expect the calls to be coming from inside the house. The WNBA half-assing a huge event makes fans feel isolated and, honestly, hurt. We just want the people in charge to care about this league as much as we do, let alone as much as the players, coaches, and team staffers do. This is probably reactionary and hyperbolic. But right now, I feel like the fans were the only ones truly valuing the players and product this weekend.
The cherry on top of this sundae is Commissioner Cathy Englebert’s comments during the weekend. Usually, Englebert’s press conferences are fluff and buzzwords. But she actually said stuff this weekend and some of it was baaaadddd.
She insisted that the WNBA’s and Chicago PD’s concerns about gun violence forced most of the events to be closed to the public. While the city is facing a legitimate gun violence crisis, the connections of “gun violence in Chicago” and racist politics should be pretty clear to anyone paying attention. Furthermore, the WNBA’s only event open to the public (other than the All -Star Game) was held in the allegedly dangerous outdoors and the Chicago Police Department even said that they had no specific concerns about gun violence at the WNBA All-Star Game.
When asked whether a state’s response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade would impact decision on where to expand the league and host the All-Star game, Engelbert produced a 1:20 of deflecting and jabber.
The answer to this question is obviously “yes, we will only put our athletes in places where their rights to privacy and bodily integrity are respected” or even just “yes.” The same should be true for legislation negatively impacting the trans community, by the way. The Commish previously said that political affiliation would be a factor in expansion decision. However, I’m a bit more worried about that statement considering what Joseph Zucker uncovered: Engelbert has donated to the campaigns of Mitt Romney in 2012 and MITCH FREAKING MCCONNELL in 2014.
Look, I think it’s entirely possible that Engelbert now truly stands for what the WNBA’s players/coaches/fans do considering when those donations were made. Hopefully, the league did their due diligence on checking whether or not that’s true before she was hired. At this point, it’s just hard to put faith in the WNBA to believe that. Also, IS THIS AN ALL-STAR MVP TROPHY FOR ANTS? Kelsey Plum might send that thing to the upper deck.
SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME
On its face, sudden death overtime does not make sense for basketball games. Luckily, basketball doesn’t have to make sense in Summer League. The NBA installed a sudden death second overtime for SL games in an attempt to wrap up games as fast as possible. We’re four days into Summer League and have already had two sudden death periods, which have both been awesome.
The Magic and Kings went into double OT after a furious 18-point Sacramento comeback in the 4th quarter. This game was a bit of a mess, but super fun. Paolo Banchero dazzled with 23 points, 6 assists, and 6 rebounds. He also had two thunderous blocks and 8 turnovers, the same amount of fouls that Emanuel Terry had! I love summer league. I’ll do a full recap of this game on YouTube tomorrow (or at some point this week). The Lakers and Hornets also went to double OT where JT Thor hit a three to win it for Charlotte.
LA-Charlotte ended in two possessions and 30 seconds into the second overtime, which likely matched what our Summer League founders would have wanted. Sacramento-Orlando had a more herky jerky second overtime with the Kings using a timeout and a lengthy challenge by the Magic. The end of regulation was so much fun that the double OT would have likely felt a bit flat regardless. Still, the stoppages made me think of some ideas to make the sudden death rule and Summer League overall even crazier.
No timeouts in double OT. The entire point of the sudden death rule is to end games expeditiously. The outcome of these games don’t really matter and, frankly, you forfeit your right to getting every call correct by going to double OT in Summer League.
Call your own fouls in double OT. Again, the outcome is largely irrelevant. Let’s put on a show with elite basketball players just playing pickup. Coaches cannot call the fouls and neither can players not involved in the play. There will be fist fights but not enough to stop me.
Ball Don’t Lie Challenges. Each team gets a challenge in double OT, but it’s initiated by the players. I’m not sure if we should go with a deep three by the challenging player or a 5-dribble one-on-one possession. Probably the shot, but we’re pushing the boundaries here.
MONEY IN THE BANK. Every sport should adopt WWE’s concept of Money In The Bank. If you’re unfamiliar, Money In The Bank refers to a WWE contract for a championship match won in the MITB ladder match in which the contract is in a briefcase dangling above the ring. The winner of the briefcase can “cash in” the contract at anytime. Let’s bring this to summer league. I haven’t quite figured out how and this is already a long article. But I will put together a full length proposal at some point.
Lynx On The Prowl
I have a crazy theory to run by y’all: being healthy helps teams win games. The Minnesota Lynx are certainly proving that right now. They were floundering after a 3-9 start (with Fowles, but without other important contributors) and a 1-4 record when Fowles was out. But since Fowles’ return, Minnesota is 4-2 and has posted a 13.9 net rating in the last six games before the break. They beat Las Vegas and Dallas by a combined 57 points in that span. All 5 of their losses since June 12th have been by 6 or fewer points.
Minnesota’s resurgence is a bit of a rorschach test. The positive view suggests that the Lynx are now healthy and will only improve. Aerial Powers has taken her seat at the head of the table on offense, which puts everyone else in the right spot. She’s scoring efficiently and she’s taking care of the ball with the best assist-to-turnover ratio of her career. Moriah Jefferson has been a shot in the arm. Rachel Banham is playing out of her mind in this team’s wins. Also, the Lynx may seemingly be adding another kind of important piece!
If Napheesa Collier returns months after giving birth and can play even close to her normal level, Minnesota’s season completely changes. I’ll wait to see if that happens. The negative nellies out there would point out that the Lynx’s recent success may not be replicable. Jefferson is shooting 55.6% over this span. She’s a very good shooter, but no one is that good at volume. Powers is a naturally streaky player and may regress. Kayla McBride hasn’t been able to scale up in Minnesota like I envisioned when she signed there. Plus, this team is still pretty thin and one injury could derail them at any point.
The Lynx are still at the bottom of the standings with 13 games left. They’ll probably need to get 16 wins to sneak into the playoffs based on previous years. Can they go 8-5 to end the season? Yes, but it’ll be hard. They have six games against elite teams Seattle, Connecticut, and Washington (in DC so EDD will likely play). They’ll need to win at least one of those games and must be perfect against the other teams.
The Lynx are the wildcard for the second half of the WNBA season. They won’t pack it in and, if things go right, they can change the playoff race. If Collier returns, they could even pull off a playoff upset or make a run. Or they could fall off the face of the league and accidentally end up with Aaliyah Boston in the draft.